BLUE

Blue !!! The Sky is blue. Sky is the limit. Or sky is not the limit? It's the way you look at the sky. If you thought about sky as just the clouds, sky is definitely not the limit. If you saw it as the infinity of space, it sure is the limit. The limit of infinity, the unknown.

From time and again man has looked up into the sky, at the stars and wondered about its vastness. Thus sowing within himself the seeds of a quest for reaching out for the unknown, pushing himself, breaking limits, again and again and again. The stars are like one's dreams, we think about it every day wondering when we will get there. Dreams keeping us fired and going, just like the way the stars are there reminding you every day of the vastness of the cosmos.

Hahahahah u should be wondering i went wierd. No ways !!! I am not that wierd yet. We got a mail about a cubicle theme contest and we got the prop called "Blue". We couldn't think of anything else other than the sky. We made a sky with a blue saree and stuck a few stars, a moon and a load of other stuff. We then stuck a lot of posters of technologies that began with BLUE, like Blue Tooth, Blue Ray, Big Blue, Deep Blue, etc. And we had to explain to the judges about the theme, that's where this blog begins :)

And those distant dreams, the stars that were so far away are now so tangible and so reachable to us just like these inventions, down here, but once so far away. When Bill Gates once said, a few KB of data shud be enough for anyone, there was someone who dreamt of a disc that carried 45 GB of data, a star so far away but now so tangible, so near and very much real.

Sky is the Limit, is a tribute to all those people who dare to dream beyond the reachable, went so far into the vastness of the sky and achieved the unthinkable. A tribute to the undying spirit of human perseverance, that has created so much magic in this otherwise boring, unchanging world :)

We hand over an Origami bird with "Sky is the Limit" written on its wings. Dare to fly into the sky, to reach out for the stars, towards the dreams so far away yet so near.......

Why is Chennai Burning and always has been?

That's a wierd name. Doesn't have any relationship to what i am writing. I remember seeing an old book in my dad's shelf, "Is Paris Burning". I haven't read that book, but i felt i cud give it tat name. The name kinda made an abstract sense for what i intended to write.

Now if someone read this topic and the person happenned to be from Chennai he would boil that very instance and open it with the prejudice that its something wrong about the city the person probably was born in or lived for a long time. But again this is just my interpretation of the place, not a statement.

Scene I, Act I
Work called. I was in Chennai even before i cud say "where do u want me to go?". I landed in Chennai and overslept thinking that i might catch the second bus just like what i would have done in Bangalore. Sloth slows down logic and realised what i had gotten myself into. I had to take a cab to work which was 40 kms away. This cabby drives me half way through, finds another of his fellow cab driver, stops the car and starts chatting with him and in a minute he says in tamil

Super Cabby : "I know this whole ride is a useless pick up, i should never have picked him up"
Super Cabby Friend : "Is the customer inside? you shouldn't be talking like this"
Super Cabby : "ha !!! i don't care"

I was shocked !! I thought this was a guy who had no clue what it means about treating customers. Leave alone below average service !! He was practically offending me. I got out of the cab, paid him and walked away to find me another cab.

Scene II, Act I
Sundays at work !! It sure sucks. We decided to eat some pizza at Dominos.

Me : "Can i have a Garlic Toasty?"
the Dude : "Yeah"
Me Friend : "There is also a Garlic Break here..."
Me : "So whats the Difference?"
the Dude : "6 Rs"Me : "Shocked !!!!"

Isnt it pathetic? Leave alone the cab driver. A trained domino's sales dude says that the difference between two food products is the price, where as he should have told the other has two slices extra. That was the worst answer any sales guy had ever given me.

Scene III, ACT I, Scene IV, ...........

I wonder what's with this place and customer service? Doesn't anyone really care about givin another person an experience? why are people so stuck in the 16th century style of selling things and services. Shop keeper's here send out a signal that they are doing a favour to the customers by letting them buy stuff from their shop. A realization should get into people's heads that it's not any more the age of "goods and services" but the age of the "Customer Experience". To compete they should do much more than just do their jobs. But again i thought, this is probably the way this place has been for quite some time and it really doesn't make a native chennaite feel odd but it sure makes the outsider feel wierd.

I have been to other parts of the state, but this place has an certain amount of rudeness associated with it. The Pro-Linguistic attitude makes it all the worse. You should be thinking, something really happenned to this guy in this city. No !! not at all. This is the way it is.

I heard a couple of my friends say they feel out of place in Chennai, Now i know why.

Love Shrugged

I was reading Atlas Shrugged and these lines made me wait for a few minutes before i read further ......

"To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless, She's earned it, its a payment , not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and underserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake- and that is a real tribute of love, beacause you sacrifice your CONSCIENCE, your REASON, your INTEGRITY and your invaluable SELF ESTEEM"

and in just a few minutes i had a chance to read about what Plato said about love and Marriage

One day, Plato asked his teacher, "What is love? How can I find it?" His teacher answered, "There is a vast wheat field in front. Walk forward without turning back, and pick only one stalk. If you find the most magnificent stalk, then you have found love." Plato walked forward, and before long, he returned with empty hands, having picked nothing. His teacher asked, "Why did you not pick any stalk?" Plato answered, "Because I could only pick once, and yet I could not turn back. I did find the most magnificent stalk, but did not know if there were any better ones ahead, so I did not pick it. As I walked further, the stalks that I saw were not as good as the earlier one, so I did not pick any in the end. His teacher then said, "And that is love."

On another day, Plato asked his teacher, "What is marriage? How can I Find it?" His teacher answered, "There is a thriving forest in front. Walk forward without turning back, and chop down only one tree. If you find the tallest tree, then you have found marriage". Plato walked forward, and before long, he returned with a tree. The tree was not thriving, and it was not tall either. It was only an ordinary tree. His teacher asked, "Why did you chop down such an ordinary tree?" Plato answered, "Because of my previous experience. I had walked through the field, but returned with empty hands. This time, I saw this tree, and I felt that it was not bad, so I chopped it down and brought it back. I did not want to miss the opportunity." His teacher then said, "And that is marriage. You see son Love is the most beautiful thing to happen to a person, its an opportunity butyou don't realize its worth when you have it but only when its gone like the field of stalks. Marriage is like the tree you chopped, it's a compromise . . .

Since the beginning of time.

If you are religious you could get offended reading this article, so please don’t read any further. This article is just a thought and does not mean to demean any religion or group or sect.

From the time history has been documented, war has always been written to be fought between good and the evil. But if history is written by the victors they will always have to be on the good side isn't it?

The problem I see as a reason causing most problems are not good or bad, but a totally different reason. There is a very basic underlying reason that fires every unrest, uprising, coup, revolt, battle or war. The reason is the feeling of every group that they are special or superior to the other in some way or the other. We Indians take immense pride in our history and culture and feel that we are special. India is a complex story, because there was no India before a few centuries, it was merely a name written within the boundary drawn by imperialism.

Feeling special, because of Religion is the most dangerous of them all, because religion is beyond all logic and cannot be reasoned out like math or geography. Things have to be done the way they have to be done because the scriptures said so. Religion is needed to herd the complex animal nature of man and I have no doubts about it. But when the same becomes a reason for someone to feel special the problem begins. I have read a little from the bible and it makes more sense to me because it applies to the current sense better than my religion. But I just couldn’t help notice that it believes that it is THE religion and that following any other religion is a mortal SIN and is punishable with hell. As far as I know Islam believes the same things too, that Mohammed was the son of god and not Jesus and Jews believe that neither of them are the son of god but just prophets and still continue to wait for their messiah. All three groups with common books, each believing they are special have fought their crusades and their Jihads. When each of these religions has felt they are special they have done caused enough damage to almost wipe humanity from the face of earth. Its not just these religions, every religion has in its own way done enough damage to itself and the others in the name of GOD. In the Middle Ages if only there were nukes on the battle inventory.


Feeling special, because of RACE is another dangerous thing, the most recent disaster being the Aryan supremacy theory of the German’s. If only Hitler reversed his Nazi party symbol he would achieved what he wanted to by unintentionally connecting RACE and RELIGION starting with a definite victory in Africa and Middle-East. Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s being another naked fact for racial cleansing. A report claims that the Hutus and the Tutsis were all once together and the British separated them based on physique to divide and rule them and gave one group advantages so they would fight the other and stay divided.

Feeling special, because of SKIN color is another thing. Apartheid, civil war in the US, etc all stemming out of color. Black is the presence of Melanin and white the absence off.

There are sub-religions, faith, sub-castes, language, etc which have caused everything from the Reservation issue to the English only shops vandalized in Bangalore.

I think that problems arise in this world the moment any group starts feeling special because they were born special or when they start feeling they are the chosen ones.

Reservation, Cancellation and Discrimination

As the reservation issue burns HOT in the minds of a lot of people I watched the way people behave when they are spooked with the feeling of insecurity is very diverse. This post is not about reservation or anti-reservation but about behavioral patterns of the mind and its diverse thoughts but ends with my stand on reservation. Diverse is a complex term because it is used just to mean that a thought is different from one point of view or value system and not that the thought is weird or bad or good.

I saw a posting on an anti-reservation community on Orkut calling everyone to report a pro-reservation community as a bogus. I just don't understand how that is going to help anybody's cause. And when another person questioned this, the reply from a totally different person is freedom of expression is a birth right and that everyone can choose to report it as bogus if they wanted to. This is a really complicated situation here where the freedom to expression is used to take away somebody else's freedom of expression.

There is a Pro-reservation blog where I saw an article about how the Dalits were treated in a college, being asked to sit separately, eat separately and being treated like they didn't exist. It is the sickest thing that can happen to any country but to use this incident of discrimination done in some 3rd class college as a reason to fight for reservation is something my mind couldn't reason out.

An Anti-Congress community formed by the anti-reservation lobby. I don't have any political views but still if there is no other political party that opposes reservation it means that they are all for it. To stay quite in the midst of an issue like reservation is like supporting it. No one has the nerve to oppose it because everyone is afraid of losing votes. There is no honest political party around so why fight a party? Shouldn't people be fighting the government what ever political party they are? By being Anti-congress what is going to be achieved? Isn't the energy of the struggle getting diluted towards other things?

I got a mail calling for contributions to conduct an all India Anti-Reservation meeting and the contributions would go towards the participant's AIR TICKETS and ACCOMODATION. Anti-reservation in its current form is a cause that is definitely worth fighting for and I have a lot of respect for them for being responsible citizens, sacrificing their time, energy, money and comforts. But isn't sponsoring for the participant's air-tickets and accommodation way too much!!! It should mostly be voluntary in my opinion. Why go to such extreme hospitality measures and spend time, energy and resources on things like this which I can only classify as luxuries. Can't they come by train; can't they be accommodated by fellow friend's who are fighting for the same cause?

In the end my take on reservation, as diverse as the four cases above. I think reservation in its current form is a dirty trick to get a couple of votes from the masses. The government has not the slightest clue about the percentage compositions of the so called OBC/SC/ST and the so called forward classes. I am definitely FOR reservation but not at the POST-GRADUATION levels. The best that can be done is to overhaul the primary education infrastructure of the nation. Get more people to go to schools first, enforce compulsory primary education rules, financial benefits for parent's sending children to schools. Do all this to get the people who have been deprived of education for centuries. But there is a lot of OBC/SC/ST who are capable of affording education, so the reservation system should be based on socio-economical nature rather than religious or communal nature. This system is merely propaganda to the masses that are not going to get benefited by the system, the real benefits in my opinion would go to the cream of the OBC/SC/ST who are already educated or can already afford education. First there should be detailed analysis done on the population compositions, about benefits trickling down to the people who are really in need of it. Not some retired judged vacationing at the cost of the country and writing a report the way the politicians want it. Engage Gartner or Forrester to do a study first and then decide how to go ahead with the issue.

It's not a dog's life after all

I was sitting in the bus stuck in the shambles of traffic. I noticed a dog trying to cross the road. The vehicles were all moving past continously so the dog couldn't cross the road. But it kept trying till it reached half way and then ran back waiting for the traffic to slow down. It kept doing that for a good 10 minutes, not getting tired and running back with the same determination to cross the road and eventually did.

Did it even know where to go after crossing the road?
Did it know where it wanted to go?
Why was it so determined?
Is it bliss being dumb?

Walking Everywhere, Reaching Nowhere

The State of goalessness, the worst thing that can happen to anyone(atleast me). It feels really miserable to go through this patch. Goal here is a very loose term. It refers to everything from the purpose of life to a very short term goal of kicking the buster who speaks loud in the bus. When one has nothing to look forward to, life comes to a stand still, he has lost his purpose in life, the eligibility to exist.

Starting from the goal of passing every grade in school, the goal of getting good marks to get a good college, the goal of doing good in college to get a good job and doing a good job to get a good salary. Goals keep changing in life and the last goal of doing a good job to get a good salary is the goal that least interests me. That is the way the system works, assigning a goal and getting you used to moving somewhere, learning something new, doing something different...... I think when one gets a job the system quits leaving us to be the masters of our own destiny. Transferring the power of pushing one forward COMPLETELY to one's own hands. I am not a very ambitious person to set definite goals to myself or am i clear with what i want in life. I am just like a fish swimming whereever the water flows.

What drives one, if it is not money? It is sometimes the satisfaction of doing something that interests one, sometimes it is the satisfaction of taking something that you started to the finish or doing something that one believes in. It is by setting myself such goals, that has kept me moving forward. The struggle that is pumped into to achieve these rare goals that pop up in my life gives me the satisfaction of having done something i wish to do. But how often does one find something that one can work for passionately?

The mind should never be goalless. When you know you have nothing to look forward to and your life is becoming purposeless it is time something is done about it. You realise that you have nothing in your mind when you go to sleep, nothing to think about with interest, it is time you found yourself something to think about when you go to sleep. It is the only way MY mind can find peace, by having something to work for with all its energy. It is high time it found something to look forward to or it will rot and would eventually loose the capacity to be contended even if it has something to look forward to.